ABC News’ Kyra Phillips shared that she was “jumped” by a “half-dressed” hobo in Washington, D.C. “We’re all experiencing it firsthand,” the news anchor said.
“I can tell you firsthand, here in downtown D.C. where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past six months, there were two people shot, one person died, literally two blocks down here from the bureau,” Phillips said during Monday’s episode of ABC News Live.
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“It was within the last two years that I actually was jumped, walking just two blocks down from here,” Phillips continued. “And then, just this morning, one of my co-workers said her car was stolen a block away from the bureau.”
The ABC anchor added that while people may want to “talk about the numbers going down” with regards to crime statistics, she nonetheless asserted that “crime is happening every single day, because we’re all experiencing it firsthand while working and living down here.”
“It’s happened to a lot of people in our building, sadly,” Phillips said of crime experienced by her colleagues in Washington, D.C.
Elaborating on her own personal experience with a vagrant, Phillips explained, “He was homeless and half-dressed — wasn’t in his clear mind.”
“It was scary as hell, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “But I fought back, I didn’t see any weapons in his hands, I felt like it was my only choice.”
“The president did mention that this effort is also going to help clean up homelessness,” Phillips added. “As we know, many members of the homeless community, sadly, take it upon themselves — like what happened to me — to carry out violence.”
Phillips was referring to President Donald Trump’s recent decision to place Washington D.C.’s police department under federal control and deploy National Guard troops in the streets.
As Breitbart News reported, President Trump declared on Monday that Washington, D.C. has been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
